The Conservatives in 2013: slipping, and still strongest

Green leader Elizabeth May could be in a power-broker position on the centre-left.

Consider the following paradox. Confidence in the direction of the federal government and the country are at near-nadir levels in recent history. On the economic outlook, both short and long-term optimism are at their lowest levels in decades. Only about one in three Canadians think they will be better off five years from now — and about half that think the next generation will be doing better than this 25 years from now.

On long-term tracking of value shifts we see the country moving away from social (but not fiscal) conservatism and we see a more polarized ideological landscape where the center has largely evaporated. Of those increasingly picking ideological sides it has been the small-l liberal camp which has been growing as the center drifts more to the left in this newly-polarized environment.

Add to this serious short-term troubles on challenging files such as the F-35 and a position on the Nexen takeover which is wildly offside all accounts of public opinion, save those of the prime minister. Put it all together and we might expect to find a recipe for imminent disaster for the government. But this is not the case.

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Despite long-term tensions and short-term travails, the Conservative party is in a pretty good place. It may be hard to imagine how having the support of less than one in three voters and having fallen nearly eight points since the last election could be considered a “pretty good” place, yet we feel this is an accurate assessment for at least two reasons.

First, the Conservatives have shown consistently that their vote is the most fiercely committed and most likely to turn out. Our current poll shows continued evidence of this formidable poltical advantage — and it’s also the case that voters in polls tend to understate their true support for incumbent “conservative” governments.

Secondly, consider the strengthened array of the centre-left options in Figure 1. While support for these choices is cumulatively up from 2011 election, particularly for the Liberals (up 5.5 points at 24.4 per cent) and Greens (8.4 per cent, up from 3.9 in 2011), NDP support has diminished and the party now registers at about the same level as the rising Liberal party at 25.8 per cent (down 4.8 points from 2011).

The Conservative party may well benefit from a perfect progressive storm of vote-splitting and a futile rise in Green party votes resulting in few or no seats — as in 2008, when almost 7 per cent support for the Greens still failed to produce a single seat. The slightly invigorated Liberal party and the slightly diminished NDP will now saw off about 50 per cent of voters and the lion’s share of the progressive vote. A even more popular Green Party is still far away from levels where their popularity can translate into seats under the first-past-the-post system. So it may well be the case that a relatively stagnant and diminished Conservative party is in position to post another majority with even lower numbers than they had going into 2011.

The real change here is that the Liberals (perhaps in anticipation of Justin Trudeau’s ascendance to leadership) has pulled into a dead heat with the NDP. The Green party is recovering to the levels they achieved in the lead-up to 2008.The final centre-left party, the near-dead Bloc Québécois, is now leading slightly in Quebec. All in all there is little evidence that the forces considered in the opening paragraph are having much effect — and if they are, it is being channelled into a center-left poltical logjam that shows no signs of relaxing Mr. Harper’s minority-majority grip on Parliament. Perhaps a consideration of voter mobility since 2011, or the second choices of voters, will provide further insight into whether the Conservatives’ paradoxical stranglehold is in any real jeopardy.

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So where are these modest shifts since the 2011 election coming from? Looking at Figure 4, we see that Conservative supporters have remained fiercely loyal, with the party retaining 78 per cent of its 2011 support. Liberal, NDP and Green supporters, meanwhile, have shown a much greater degree of liquidity and promiscuity in their constituents. The churning among centre-left parties suggests a much more tepid connection to their current choices. This casting doesn’t augur particularly well for any of any of these parties jumping into the lead as the clear home for frustrated centre-left voters. For example, the Green Party has bled nearly half of its past supporters, but the influx in former Liberal and NDP supporters, as well as new voters, has more than made up for this loss.

Additionally, data on second choice (see Figure 5) reveals that Conservative supporters are largely entrenched in terms of their support. Most of these respondents are unwilling to even consider voting for another party. Turning to the other end of the political spectrum, however, we see that the Liberal and NDP camps are much more open to supporting each other. Green Party supporters are open to voting either Liberal or NDP while Bloc voters appear to have warmed to the idea of voting NDP.

In what normally might be considered good news for them, the parties on the centre-left fare very well in terms of growth opportunities. If we were to set a ceiling by adding voters’ current and second choices, the Conservatives would be at 43.2 points, the NDP at 46.8, the Liberals at a virtually identical 46.6, and the Green party in a pretty seat-rich 19.5 territory.

Despite the allure of these figures, nothing in the current churning patterns suggests that we are going to see anything much different than what we’re seeing right now: two almost equally matched Liberal and NDP parties and a slightly more muscular Green party which would further siphon off the centre left vote in a rather seat-inefficient manner. So the new political arithmetic suggests that the new minority-majority, which is increasingly offside with most Canadians, will continue to be majority government for some time.

The NDP and Liberals are both looking relatively strong compared to recent history. That probably precludes any real chances of even an informal cooperation deal before the next election. This leaves two wild card scenarios. Here’s one: either the NDP or the Liberals create some kind of deal with the Greens to vault them into a clear lead position. This is a pretty low-rent option compared to the inertia underpinning the deep institutional histories standing in the path of a NDP-Liberal deal. Green supporters might be enticed to show up in greater numbers with a chance of more seats and a seat at the cabinet table in a future government bolstered by them. The second wild card would be a meltdown in one of the current trouble files the government faces — F-35s, perhaps, but this hasn’t really captured the public’s indignation yet.

One final threat which we will deal with in our next release is a profound darkening of both the short-term and long-term economic outlooks. No incumbent can survive the steady grind of worsening economic outlooks indefinitely; if this mood worsens, even persists, the auspicious political arithmetic of the current political landscape may not be enough of a refuge.

Putting aside all these ifs, the government appears to be in very good place for continued political success.

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